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Hello, and welcome back to the VEX Classroom. My name is Aimee, and in this video, which is called "Back to School Doesn't Mean Back to Boring," we're going to be talking about having fun with those classroom routines and procedures that you absolutely have to teach at the beginning of the school year. Whether you're a classroom teacher, a STEM teacher, or whatever you're teaching, you know you've gotta focus on those routines.

I know that at the beginning of the school year, I would have trouble sleeping in anticipation of the first day of school. I would be so excited to learn all the new things about my new students and try out all the new stuff I'd learned over the summer in professional development. But I would also, I have to admit, have a little bit of dread about the time period where I was just focusing so much on getting my kids up to speed with all of those classroom procedures.

And it's critically important, right? Because those procedures and routines are what make students feel safe in the classroom because it communicates to them what we expect. And if students know what we expect of them, they're going to have far fewer behavior issues. So spending that time teaching those routines and procedures is a critical part of the school year.

However, if you've been teaching for a long time, it only makes sense that you're not gonna be super excited to teach how to use the electric pencil sharpener for the 14th year in a row. So in this video, I'm going to attempt to give you some ideas for ways to have more fun when you're teaching your classroom routines and procedures and make it a more enjoyable experience for your students and for you.

All right, so the first thing I would suggest is to involve your students in the co-creation of your classroom environment, right? Including those routines and procedures, so that they feel like they have a voice in it and that it's their classroom that they're creating with you in order for them to have a safe and fun place to learn. Now, when I say that, I don't mean let them take over or have them run the show because that is not gonna work. You still need, as a teacher, a super solid plan for each procedure or routine that you know you're gonna teach. From walking down the hallway to cleaning up your VEX Robotics kits at the end of a period, all of those things need a procedure.

So come in with a plan in mind and then work together with your kids to negotiate so everybody feels like they've contributed and have a part of how those procedures are going to be implemented. So that's super important because once the students have that buy-in, they're more likely to keep doing those procedures correctly throughout the course of the year and have far fewer behavior problems.

You can approach teaching these routines and procedures just like you were teaching other curriculum. You want what you're teaching to be fun and engaging for students so they enjoy themselves while they're learning it and stay engaged. So you can do the same thing with this. You're still gonna need to model what they need to do, you're gonna need to have them have lots of practice opportunities, and you're gonna need to provide them some feedback.

So when I was teaching, one way that I would do my routines and procedures at the beginning of the year is start off with the modeling. I would pretend like my classroom was a stage, right? I'd mark up a little stage, it would be the acting area, and I would get on the stage. I would model how I wanted students to do a certain procedure. I would show them exactly what I wanted. So if you're a VEX 123 teacher, and you want to have your students put the 123 robots the right way back in the charging case so that the receptacle for the charger is facing up.

Thank you for joining me in this video. I hope these tips help you make your classroom routines more engaging and enjoyable. Remember, a fun and structured environment is key to a successful school year. See you next time!

To effectively model a behavior or procedure, you need to explicitly demonstrate it while acting it out. Be a bit overdramatic to ensure clarity in what you're trying to convey to students, leaving nothing out. Model the behavior on stage, then invite students to act it out as well. They should demonstrate the correct way to perform the task, going through all the procedures, including putting things away and showing exactly what they're supposed to do.

Next, allow students to act out the incorrect way or pretend to be the "naughty kid" who isn't following the rules. They often find this fun. Other students can then raise their hands to comment on how to do it correctly and demonstrate the right way to the "naughty" student. As a teacher, you can also pretend to be the misbehaving student, which younger kids particularly enjoy. This approach keeps them engaged and giggling while still focusing on learning the routine you're teaching. This is one method of modeling.

When providing students with practice opportunities, it's important to have them get up and practice the procedure you've just modeled. However, if all you're doing during the first few weeks of school is modeling and practicing, students may become bored. To keep them engaged, incorporate fun and project-based ways of practicing these routines and procedures.

Students can create posters about classroom procedures or make photo essays with step-by-step directions for areas like the VEX GO center. They can also produce videos similar to those they watch on certain websites, demonstrating how to put away VEX IQ pieces or store a half-finished build on a designated sharing shelf. These videos can be shared with classmates as a great way to reinforce routines and procedures.

Another engaging activity is to have students take the principal on a tour of the classroom, showing them different areas and explaining how to interact with materials. This not only reinforces classroom procedures but also provides an opportunity for students to interact with the principal.

Students can also engage in peer teaching tutorials, where they teach other students a routine or procedure they've learned. Encourage creative methods like comics, books, and art projects to reinforce procedures. Displaying their artwork in the classroom helps them feel like they're contributing to their environment from the start of the year.

To make practicing routines fun, create games for students to play. For example, they could play "Two Truths and a Lie" focused on procedures or a Jeopardy game for VEX EXP students about proper equipment handling, battery charging, and electronics care. Any classroom procedure can be turned into a Jeopardy question or answer.

Thank you for considering these strategies to enhance student engagement and learning. By incorporating creativity and fun into routine practice, you can foster a positive and interactive classroom environment.

So that would be a really fun thing for older students to do. Also, when you're doing this stuff at the beginning of the year, teaching these classroom routines that must be taught, it's important to interweave them with other things that are engaging for students as well. Reading fun books about the beginning of the school year is great. Giving kids opportunities to express who they are and get to know kinds of games and activities are really important so that it doesn't become super tedious when you're teaching all these new roles and routines.

Also, you can create classroom jobs, right? We've all probably had classroom jobs at one point, and you can kind of go one way or the other with it. You can do the typical jobs like who sharpens the pencils and who passes the paper out and all of that kind of stuff. Or you can be really creative with your classroom jobs. For example, if you're teaching VEX IQ and you're using a lot of classroom competitions, maybe you want to create a leaderboard manager whose job it is to start and manage the leaderboard. Or maybe you want to create a job called DJ for someone to pick the music for classroom competitions. Or maybe you want to have a podcaster, someone who would be talking about what happened in the classroom competition that week for VEX IQ or VEX EXP and recapping the week in robotics education for their classroom.

You could also have an archivist who takes pictures and hangs up images like an image of the week or something about what the kids did with VEX GO or even with VEX 123. Even really young kids can take pictures, right? So those kinds of roles can also create great classroom ownership and give kids a feeling of responsibility towards their classroom. It's that overall feeling of being responsible and a part of a community and an environment that really motivates kids to want to follow the procedures and keep their classroom clean and organized, a place where everybody wants to be.

I hope that this video gave you a few ideas of how you might change up your beginning of the year classroom routine teaching to make it more fun for you and more fun for your students. If you have any ideas of your own that you'd like to share that other people in the PD+ community might be interested in hearing about, please add them below this post. I will look forward to reading them and also seeing you back here in the VEX Classroom sometime soon.

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